It had whispered into his thoughts—not alien, but eerily familiar, like an echo of himself coming from elsewhere. A memory he never lived.
Selene stepped closer. "That voice… it was one of the Architects?"
Valerian gave a slight nod. "More than that. I think… they've been waiting."
Without another word, he stepped into the gate.
And the world turned upside down.
There was no sense of falling. No sense of ground. Just motion without movement—his body suspended in a tunnel of broken light and glass. Shards of color drifted past like forgotten fragments of a dream. Symbols, memories, equations—pieces of code and history—spun around him. He wasn't walking, yet something moved him forward.
Then it all dissolved.
He found himself standing in an impossible chamber.
